Plantation Eyes Law To Keep Green Green

PLANTATION — Retiring Councilman Neil La Hurd hopes his colleagues will give him an evergreen goodbye gift -- a law that would require developers to maintain the landscaping they plant.

``I`d like the city to enact something to insist on continued compliance with site plans, forcing the landscaping to be kept up,`` La Hurd said.

In past years council members have discussed the same idea but never did anything about it.

When someone builds a non-residential structure in the city, the council must approve all aspects of the plans, including how many trees and other plantings will be at the property.

La Hurd said the builders put in the required greenery but often do not maintain it and it dies. He said he knows of several locations where this has happened and the city is powerless to do anything.

Councilwoman Rae Carole Armstrong agreed, saying the city needs something to permit continuing enforcement of the landscape portions of site plans.

Armstrong asked that city landscape architect Jeffrey Siegel present the council will ideas about what should be enacted to give him the power to see that greenery stays green.

In another matter dealing with the color green, council members said they don`t want greenish wooden utility poles to be installed by Florida Power & Light Company when the firm extends an electric line on Sunrise Boulevard, west of Pine Island Road.

The city has a policy that utility poles on major arterial roads are to be of concrete, not of treated wood.

City Attorney Donald Lunny said that several years ago the City Council approved an ordinance that FP&L must use the same type of pole whenever a transmission line is extended and that the utility firm pay for the work. The poles supporting lines on Sunrise Boulevard, east of Pine Island Road, are concrete.

Mayor Frank Veltri said FP&L has said the city will have to pay $5,809 for eight new poles required for the extension. He also said that Gulfstream Land and Development Corp., the major developer in the area where the extension will be, told him it would not pay the money.

Gulfstream Vice President Larry Justiz said that within the past year FP&L has changed its policy about paying for concrete poles and ``now FP&L says they will pay for wooden poles and any difference (higher cost) for concrete poles has to be paid by the city.``

Council members instructed Veltri to negotiate with FL&L to try to force the firm to follow the city ordinance, saying they do not feel the utility company can change its policy and overrule a local law.

In other action the council:

(BU) Approved a revised garbage collection rate schedule that will apply only to condominiums. The new rate will be an increase of six percent over last year`s fees; a smaller hike than had been requested by Waste Management and previously agreed to.

(BU) Gave initial approval to two ordinances changing the wording in two sections of the city`s zoning laws. The changes are necessary to correct minor errors made when the laws were prepared by a scrivener.

(BU) Approved the site plan for the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints on the west side of Hiatus Road, just north of Northwest Eighth Street.

(BU) In workshop session agreed to advertise for future consideration a stricter ordinance banning parking in spaces reserved for handicapped people and changes in the law banning the parking of campers, commercial vehicles, buses, house trailers and other large vehicles in various areas of the city.